Akira Hatsune

Visual Basic

Japan

Back in 1998 – when Akira Hatsune started his activity in the community - the community was rather quiet and niched compared to what we are seeing now. Akira joined the Windows mailing list to collect technical information related to Visual Basic, and later started giving presentations to share his technical knowledge. Those opportunities were provided by the owner of the mailing list.

Besides working on the development and architecture of enterprise applications as an engineer, Akira also builds infrastructure on public cloud. Such crossover enhances Akira's capability to work with developers not familiar with cloud technology.

After being in the community for 10 years, Akira was awarded as a Microsoft MVP in 2008.

Akira says of his experience as an MVP, “Out of several opportunities given to MVP, Global Summit is the most interesting one. I am not good at English communication but the coding is a global language. Meeting MVP from other regions and discussing over the coding – such experience is really priceless.”

He adds that being an MVP is not only about excitement, “It doesn't make drastic change to my activity in the community. But I pay more attention not to send inappropriate or misleading information under the name of ‘MVP.’ I spend extra time to review multiple sources for double/triple check. Also I read English articles – though this is something I am not good at – to keep myself up-to-date and share the latest information with the community, in both online and offline channel.”

He also sees opportunities in what MVPs can offer: “We no longer experience the latency we used to see in the past, such as implementation of VB product being slower than C#. However there are less and less samples and technical information available. I believe this is what MVP can cover and we can build Win-Win relationship.”

Akira says he is willing and dedicated to contribute to further improvement of Visual Basic and adds this message to future Microsoft MVP candidates: “If you are interested in Visual Basic, please join us as an MVP and let's develop and spread know-how of Visual Basic in the latest framework!”